


A grand, romantic gesture

by anecdotalist



Series: This family of ours [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage, keith pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 15:11:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17226359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anecdotalist/pseuds/anecdotalist
Summary: Keith and Shiro, and the start of their marriage.(A companion fic toTogether we make a family)---“Anyway,” Lance continues as if he didn’t just nearly have his hand bitten off by an irritated wolf, “now that you and Shiro are romantically involved, you’ve gotta up your game, raise the stakes, add some razzle dazzle—”“Please stop.”“I’m just sayin’. You have to do something to show him how you feel, and it’s gotta be grand and beautiful. It has to come from the heart. Be one of a kind.”“Do. You. Have. Any. Suggestions?” he bites out, fighting off a headache.“Nope,” Lance says, popping the ‘p’. “Sorry amigo. This is all on you.”Keith growls. “Get out.”Lance laughs as he goes. Keith swears he’s going to kill him one day.





	A grand, romantic gesture

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet takes place after Keith wakes up in the hospital and before the epilogue of [Together we make a family](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737286). It probably won't make sense unless you've read that one already.
> 
> Also, while this technically takes place before Season 8 starts, it's part of a series that is not S8 compliant.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Shiro asks, prosthetic frozen over the sheafs of pages that he’d been about to sign.

“Yes,” Keith answers immediately, firmly, because of course he does. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life than that he wants to spend the rest of it by Shiro’s side. But then it occurs to him that maybe Shiro doesn’t want that. Or doesn’t want it to be in the same way that he does. “Do, uh, do you? I know that you only said what you did because you were worried about me….”

Shiro turns swiftly to face him on the narrow hospital bed—too small to fit them both comfortably, but Shiro hasn’t complained and Keith likes having him pressed right up against him—and grips his arm. “No, Keith, that wasn’t the _only_ —and anyway, _you_ were the one who was too loopy on pain medications and waking up from a coma to even know what you were agreeing to.” Shiro looks almost more distressed by this than he’s been with most of the things they’d gone through. “We should just tell everyone that I lied and we’re not really married.”

“If that’s what you really want to do, I’m okay with it. But don’t do it on my account. I promise you, I am totally fine with this and I want to do this. Either now or later.” He tilts his head to meet Shiro’s gaze and tries to convey the truth of his words with every fiber of his being.

Shiro blushes. “I just don’t want you to feel pressured into it.”

Keith raises his eyebrows. “When have you ever known me to be pressured into anything I didn’t really want to do?”

“That’s true,” Shiro says with a chuckle. “You are the most stubborn person I have ever met.”

“And you’re the most persistent.” A good thing too, or else Keith wouldn’t be where he is today and he’d be a lot worse off. “Anyway, if you still wanted to us to date—”

“I do.” Shiro’s hand slides down to twine their fingers together. His prosthetic, Keith is distantly amused to note, has remained poised above the papers in the exact position it was before Shiro had started shifting around.

“—and you think we might eventually get to this point—”

“You already know that I do.”

“—then we might as well just sign the papers now. If we change our minds later, we can always get a divorce. Lots of people do it. If we back out now and then come back and do it again later, we’ll just confuse people.”

Shiro frowns.

“Besides, this is all just legal mumbo-jumbo. It’s just so that we get, I dunno, legal benefits of being married. Like tax breaks or whatever.” He stills as something occurs to him. “Do you think we owe back taxes for the past couple of years since we weren’t even on Earth? Does being a Paladin count as a _job_? Were we supposed to be paid?”

“I...I don’t...oh my god.” Shiro breaks down into a laugh, which sets Keith off too. “I have no idea? This whole thing is a mess. I don’t even know if they’ll be able to process this right now because I’m still legally dead, technically.”

“So you married a man in a coma and I’m marrying a dead man, is that what you’re saying?”

Shiro snorts. “Pretty much. We should definitely do this. I want to see their faces when they have to untangle the whole thing. Whoever the poor souls are who are stuck figuring out all the bureaucratic red tape around discovering aliens, having alien visitors, and visiting alien planets.”

“Not to mention having a half-alien who was born on Earth. Do you think they’ll revoke my Earth citizenship?”

“If they do, I’m going to go back and change my answer for place of birth to ‘cloning facility in space.’”

“Oh my god, no, don’t do that—”

“That’s where this body was made, though—” Shiro’s grinning widely and his eyes are bright.

Keith bites back a responding smile and gives him a mock-stern look. “One of us has to remain a citizen of a planet that will pay us a salary. How else are we going to afford food and housing?”

Shiro’s grin just widens so much that his eyes scrunch shut. He’s the most relaxed that he’s been since Keith’s woken up in the hospital room.

Keith shakes his head and huffs out a laugh. He nudges Shiro’s shoulder lightly. “Just sign the damn forms already so we can get married.”

“So romantic,” Shiro teases. But his prosthetic does move, finally, and sign his name with a flourish. Then he repositions the papers so that they’re at a better angle for Keith and holds out the pen.

Loathe to release Shiro’s hand, Keith uses his left hand to sign. It’s not quite as strong in writing as his right is but it’s good enough. “You’re sure about each of us keeping our own names for now?”

“Yeah. At least until all the initial paperwork’s sorted out. I do like the idea of combining our names into Koshiro, though.”

“Me too.” He hopes the name change forms aren’t extensive.

 

* * *

 

 “—for Shiro!”

Shiro’s name jolts him out of his daze and Keith jerks guiltily. He’d tuned Lance out when he started going on about Allura’s hair (it _is_ pretty, he acknowledges, but he doesn’t care about it in quite the same way that Lance does). “What?” he asks now.

If Lance realizes that he hadn’t been paying attention, he doesn’t say anything. Which means he probably doesn’t because he’d be the first to call Keith out on not listening to him. “Don’t ‘what’ me like you don’t know what I mean. A grand, romantic gesture! As a token of your love for him. To celebrate your marriage.”

Keith is bewildered. “But _why_? Isn’t marriage itself the ‘grand gesture?’ We’ve decided to commit ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives.”

“Pssh,” Lance dismisses with a wave of his hand from the hospital visitor chair. “You two were already totally committed to each other for life by the time we formed Voltron. Or maybe even before that? That would explain your desert ninja rescue.”

Keith grunts but doesn’t say anything; it’s none of Lance’s business that Keith had already been unable to picture life without Shiro in it before he left for Kerberos, had been devastated when Shiro was declared presumed dead, had been determined to get up to space somehow himself because a part of him desperately clung to the hope that Shiro was still alive.

“Anyway, you only have yourself to blame. You’ve set impossible standards. Your regular, everyday displays of love include—” Lance holds up his hand and starts ticking off points with his fingers “—breaking him out of government custody, piloting Black to save his life from those hyena things when you two were stranded on that planet, finding him when he was floating aimlessly in space all dehydrated and malnourished and yes, I’m counting that even though that technically was Shiro’s clone and not actually him.” Lance narrows his eyes at him pointedly. “Throwing yourself and Black through a wormhole alone to fight off a Galra _fleet_ when clone Shiro turned evil, fighting off evil clone Shiro without killing him, finding _real_ Shiro’s consciousness in Black’s astral plane, and...probably a million other examples that the rest of us don’t even know about.”

Keith crosses his arms, feeling a little defensive. “So? What, was I not supposed to do any of those things? I couldn’t just let him die.”

Lance covers his face with one hand and groans dramatically. “You’re missing the point, mullet head. You did all of that while you guys were just friends!” He throws his arm out in emphasis, and it smacks the wolf on the nose where he’d been napping on the windowsill. The wolf wakes with a growl and a snap of his jaws in the air where Lance’s hand would still be if he hadn’t snatched it back to himself protectively. “Sorry, sorry Cosmo, I didn’t mean that.”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith says warningly.

“Alright, fine. Sorry, wolf. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. And I didn’t mean to call you by a name that you haven’t agreed to.”

The wolf huffs and lays back down, curling around so that his nose is tucked safely away out of reach of Lance’s arms.

“Anyway,” Lance continues as if he didn’t just nearly have his hand bitten off by an irritated wolf, “now that you and Shiro are romantically involved, you’ve gotta up your game, raise the stakes, add some razzle dazzle—”

“Please stop.”

“I’m just sayin’. You have to do something to show him how you feel, and it’s gotta be grand and beautiful. It has to come from the heart. Be one of a kind.”

“Do. You. Have. Any. Suggestions?” he bites out, fighting off a headache.

“Nope,” Lance says, popping the ‘p’. “Sorry amigo. This is all on you.”

Keith growls. “Get out.”

Lance laughs as he goes. Keith swears he’s going to kill him one day.

 

* * *

 

 A week after he’s been discharged from the hospital, Shiro comes to find him at the gym as the Blades are wrapping up their morning training. His eyes are shining and he’s shifting restlessly in palpable excitement.

“What’s going on?” Keith asks, amused.

“Are you done here?”

“Just have to help pack up everything and shower.”

“Great. Meet me in the hangar in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, sure,” Keith agrees, and Shiro gives him a quick peck and then takes off before Keith can ask where they’re going. He shakes his head. _I guess it’s a surprise._

He hurries through his usual post-training routine and arrives at the hangar in fifteen minutes. Shiro’s already there, leaning against one of the Garrison’s beige and orange hoverbikes.

“Brings back memories, don’t they?” Shiro asks.

“Yeah, they sure do.” Especially the image of Shiro leaning casually against one of them, so comfortable in his own skin and genuinely interested in spending time with Keith. It makes his breath catch just like it had years ago. “We going racing then?” His heartbeat picks up at the prospect. They’ve been so busy helping with the rebuilding effort that they haven’t been able to get away much just by themselves. Especially for something fun.

“No, not today. I am now officially, legally, alive again.”

Keith grins. “Congrats. So we’re celebrating.”

“Kind of. More like going shopping. I got my backpay from the last five years. Plus bonus hazard pay. I’ve set some of it aside in case they really do want me to pay taxes but I thought we could use the rest to buy a pair of wedding rings.” There’s a faint flush on his cheeks which Keith finds all too endearing. “There are a couple of jewelers in the market that’s been set up in the city, from space and from Earth. Hopefully some of them will be selling rings.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to find something there,” Keith reassures. He feels something in him melting at Shiro’s sincerity. _So this is what it feels like, to be with Shiro._ He vows to protect this feeling with his life, to never take Shiro for granted. He understands Adam even less, now that he’s experienced this for himself; he’d give Shiro anything, support him in anything he wanted to do, as long as it made him happy.

There’s a moment of indecision while the two of them figure out who’s going to fly and who will be the passenger. They finally agree that Shiro will fly them to the market and Keith will fly them back. Keith wraps his arms tightly around Shiro as the hoverbike rises in the air and thinks that he wouldn’t mind if Shiro flew all the time as long as he’s able to sit pressed up against him like this.

The market’s been set up in a section of the city that’s completely cleared of rubble. Some of the vendors have stalls outside, with fabric draped over poles to provide cover; others have taken over the vacant stores in whatever buildings are still intact.

As they walk, Shiro’s prosthetic comes to rest against his lower back, fingers wrapping gently around his hip. It runs a little hotter than his flesh arm but not painfully so and Keith likes the comforting weight of it.

They don’t have much luck with the first couple of sellers. Then the third one looks at them with grateful adoration shining in her eyes and offers them any piece of jewelry for free with such earnest insistence that they find themselves backing away until they’re able to lose themselves in the crowd. Then they turn tail and run.

“That was weird,” Keith grunts.

“Yeah,” Shiro pants in agreement. “Very awkward.”

They find a pair of rings that feel just right for them, finally—silver tungsten bands bracketing a row of black sapphires and black diamonds embedded in a line around the entirety of the rings. “Fitting for the Black Paladins,” Keith says with a small quirk of his lips.

“Perfect,” Shiro agrees.

Unfortunately, the vendor cares less about romantic intentions and more about driving a hard bargain. They’re an alien species that Keith and Shiro haven’t run into before, with four arms and three eyes. Each of those eyes narrow at them calculatedly as they name a price that sounds exorbitant even for the current market conditions. “How will you be paying today?” they ask.

Shiro winces as he holds up a credit card. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a two-year payment plan?”

The vendor takes the card with a frown, tapping it on the wooden surface of the stall and then bringing it up their mouth to flick their tongue against the edge. “Gah!” they spit in disgust and throws the card down. “What kind of insult is this? This is plastic! It’s worthless!”

Shiro looks a little taken aback. “It’s a credit card. It’s just a way to transfer credits.”

“Intergalactic credits?” the vendor asks with a sharp gleam in their eyes.

“I, uh, probably not yet—”

“Pssh! Useless, then. Pay in trade or labor.”

Keith pales. Labor for that amount of money would take longer than they could spare. And they don’t have anything valuable to trade. From the crestfallen expression on Shiro’s face, he’s come to the same conclusion.

“Come on, Shiro,” he murmurs, taking him by the elbow. “It’s okay. We don’t need rings.” He gently pulls him away from the stall, ignoring the vendor’s irritated huff.

“I—I just….”

“I know,” Keith soothes. Shiro’s mechanical fingers tighten on his hip where they have yet to let go since first wrapping around him. “You just wanted something to commemorate our union.” Shiro’s a romantic. A traditional, sweep-you-off-your-feet kind of guy.

Shiro sighs dejectedly. “Yeah.”

“Well, we still have time. We can come back later. Maybe ask around about that intergalactic currency.” Shiro nods reluctantly but he still seems shrunken in on himself and Keith hates seeing that. “Hey, let’s go for a ride in the desert, yeah? Just like the good ol’ days. Maybe we can see if that shack of mine is still standing.”

“Yeah, alright.” As Shiro visibly tries to rally his spirits back up, Keith curses in his head. Lance was right, goddamnit.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until he’s with the Blades preparing for a memorial for all the lost agents that he has an idea of what he could do for Shiro that fulfills the criteria of “grand, romantic gesture”. He stands at attention next to his mother during the formal ceremony (a naming of all the agents they’ve lost and each of their accomplishments. It’s a depressingly long list) and his thumb rubs thoughtfully against the edge of his knife, sheathed at his side today instead of his back.

The blades they’ve removed from Macidus’ cave are laid out in a row before them, edges sharp but inner purple-blue fire extinguished. It’s unusual for them to even have the blades for this ceremony, he knows; usually when a Marmoran agent is killed, their weapon is lost with them.

He wonders what the swords would feel like now that their owners are gone. As a child, he’d always felt connected to his mother through her knife, always felt that she was out there somewhere, alive and well and waiting for him to find her. He’d tried to chalk it up to childish sentiment when he got older but a part of him had never been able to fully dismiss the feeling that that connection was real, that he really could feel her presence in the knife.

And it turns out that he had, that the blades they use _are_ connected to their wielders’ life forces.  Now his mother’s sword carries pieces of both of them and he doesn’t have to ask his mother to know how invaluable that was to her when she had gone with Kolivan to search for surviving Blades while he’d returned to Earth.

When most of the Blades disperse after the memorial to their various duties, Keith stays behind to help Kolivan transport the swords to one of the forges that Sendak had built. They were the only places with fires hot enough to melt luxite so that they could be recast into new swords.

“Kolivan,” he starts hesitantly, drawing a curious look from his mother. “I was wondering if it might be possible….”

 

* * *

 

Keith shifts restlessly, foot tapping as he peeks around the corner every other minute until Lance finally arrives and enters the meeting room. Ten minutes after the supposed start of the meeting. But Keith’s too nervous to do more than just make note of that for now.

“Okay, everyone’s inside,” he announces to the Blades gathered around him. They nod a solemn affirmative as if they hadn’t been watching for themselves as each of the Paladins, plus Coran, Pidge’s parents, and Matt had arrived.

“You have no need to be nervous,” his mother murmurs to him as they troop down the short hallway to the doors of the conference room.

He only manages to grunt a response through the pounding of his heart but luckily she seems to understand. His cheeks and the back of his neck feel hot. He feels a little like he’s going to his own execution.

When he pauses outside the doors for one last mental pep talk, he hears Lance exclaim, “Are you serious? I got here before Keith did? Has anyone heard from him? Are we sure he’s not lying dead in a ditch somewhere?”

Keith snorts and chooses that moment to make his entrance.

“Keith, man, what gives?” Lance asks as soon as the doors open. “Where’ve you been?”

Keith ignores him, eyes picking out Shiro already seated at the head of the table. He’s dressed in his usual uniform and he’s got a small, soft smile on his face, eyes curious as he watches Keith approach him.

“Must be an important agenda today if you’ve invited so many guests,” he comments.

“I, uh, yeah.” Keith licks his lips, eyes darting around the room as his thoughts race. He hadn’t planned this out fully. How should he do this? Does he kneel? Take the empty seat next to Shiro? Get down on one knee? But this isn’t a proposal. And they’re equals so symbolically, they should be at the same level, right? He feels the weight of everyone’s gazes on him as he has his internal struggle and his grip tightens around the leather pouch in his hands.

Krolia’s hand landing on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze grounds him back in the moment. He sucks in a breath. This is why he doesn’t _do_ these kinds of productions. But it’s too late to back out now.

“Could you, um, stand for a moment?” he asks and Shiro arches a brow but pushes his chair back to do so. “All of you,” he adds, directing it to the rest of the group. “Can you all just get up for a sec. And maybe we could move the table out of the way?”

A couple of the Marmoran agents swiftly lift the table and move it to one end of the room amid the scraping of chairs as everyone else stands up.

“They made that look so light,” Sam murmurs in awe.

“Ugh, is this going to be an impromptu fight training session or something?” Pidge groans.

“No,” Keith answers absently, eyes still on Shiro. “This is—” he licks his lips again “—this is….” He gives up trying to explain it. They’ll catch on soon enough. Instead, he tells Shiro, “I know this isn’t the most romantic setting.”

Hunk squeals.

“And I don’t have rings.”

Lance groans exasperatedly.

“But there’s a galra tradition where a mated pair exchange tokens of their commitment to each other in front of their families. The tokens can be anything that the couple chooses. So I asked for these to be made for us, and Kolivan agreed.” He reaches into the pouch then and takes out the pair of bracelets inside. They’re three fingers’ breadth wide, with two thin lines of fluorescent blue-purple along the outer edges.

“They’re identical, made from the same mold.” The only two that were made from that mold and that will ever be made from that mold, because he’d destroyed it after in a burst of romantic sentiment that he’ll deny to his dying days.

“And they’re made of luxite,” he says, holding them up to the light. “So over time, they’ll become connected to our life forces. And if we trade off with them enough, they’ll each connect with both of our forces. That way, even if we’re separated, we’ll be able to feel each other.” And know if the other one is okay, he thinks but doesn’t say. He’s realistic enough to accept that in their respective positions, it’s likely that they’ll have separate missions more often than not.

“What do you think?” he asks anxiously, because Shiro hasn’t said a word the whole time he’s talked; just watched him with wide eyes.

“I think...they’re beautiful.” Shiro sounds overwhelmed. He reaches for one and runs a finger along it, gentle like he’s touching a baby bird.

Keith breaks out into a small grin, feeling so soft towards this man he’s loved for years. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Someone sniffles behind them. Keith doesn’t bother looking; it’s probably Hunk.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get the rings.”

Shiro shakes his head. “We don’t need rings. This is better. This is...ours.” He holds out his left wrist and Keith slips one of the bracelets on for him, then lets Shiro do the same for him. Then Shiro cups his hand around the nape of his neck and kisses him and Keith’s the one feeling overwhelmed. That seems to break the spell of anticipatory silence over the room, as the others crowd around them, shouting congratulations and clamoring to see the bracelets up close.

“Wait a minute!” Keith protests, pulling just far enough away from Shiro that he can raise his arm between them. “I’m not done.” He pushes the sleeve of his uniform up and clasps his hand over his bracelet. He concentrates and feels it warm up. Then it expands to cover his whole forearm. “When it’s activated, it can double as an arm guard.” He does the same for Shiro’s. “We’re not sure yet if you’ve got enough galra DNA to do this yourself,” he tells him, “but we can try it out later.”

Shiro just grins at him.

Lance smacks him on the back of his head.

“Ow, what was that for?” Keith yelps, rubbing his head. He glares at Lance.

“For turning a romantic gesture into a battle accessory! I can’t _believe_ you.”

“What? The luxite has this transformative capability. It’d have been a waste not to use it. And if we come across any more Druids, he’ll be better protected. Luxite’s the only thing that can withstand their attacks and kill them. It’s why the Blades use it.”

“Well, I love it,” Shiro says firmly. “Thank you, Keith. This is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever given me.”

Keith bites down on his bottom lip, flushing. “Good. Great.” He smiles a little dopily. Then he remembers where they are and clears his throat. “So, onto the actual agenda for the meeting today—”

“What!” Lance squawks. “No way! Absolutely not!”

Keith frowns. “What’s wrong now?”

Lance stares at him like he’s the densest person on the planet. “Are you kidding me? There’s _no way_ you’re going to hold a regular strategy meeting after you just had what was essentially a wedding. I’m canceling the meeting.”

“Lance—”

“Nope. As the Paladin of the Red Lion, and therefore your second-in-command, trusty right hand, and the person who’s always got your back, I’m going to save you from yourself and cancel the meeting. You two crazy lovebirds go spend the day together. Go racing in the desert, take Black out for a joy ride, whatever you adrenaline junkies consider to be romantic activities.”

“Oh!” Hunk interjects, hands clasped under his chin and eyes sparkling with excitement. “I’ll prepare a feast for tonight! With a cake! You can’t have a wedding ceremony without cake.”

“A feast!” Allura exclaims. “How fun!”

“I can put together some flower arrangements,” Colleen adds.

“Pidge and I can make a playlist,” Matt volunteers. Pidge scowls up at him but other than a minute readjustment of her glasses, doesn’t protest.

“Excellent!” Lance claps his hands together like it’s a done deal. “Spend the afternoon together,” he tells Keith and Shiro, “and come back tonight for dinner. We are gonna parrr-tayyy.” He shoves them not-so-gently out the door. “The Blades and I will handle decoration. We’ll clear out the cafeteria. Or maybe the officer’s lounge. Or maybe we can ask Iverson where else to hold a celebration. Either way, don’t worry about a thing. Just go, have fun, and come back by six.”

“But—”

“No buts! You did your galra tradition, now it’s time for a human tradition. A reception!”

Keith sighs and gives in. “Fine, fine. But absolutely _none_ of those traditional wedding reception rituals or I will kill you for real.” He gives Lance his fiercest glare.

Lance gulps. “Right, no gimmicks. Just food. And music.” Keith narrows his eyes at him. “Background music! For ambience. No dancing. No djs, I swear.”

Shiro chuckles. “Just a dinner with the people who are close to us is more than enough, Lance. We really don’t need anything else.”

“Okay, okay,” Lance says. “But only because that’s what you want.” He smirks at them. “Now you kids run along and have fun and don’t get into trouble. We’ll see you later!” And with that, he slams the door in their faces.

“I don’t trust him,” Keith mutters.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Shiro says. He wraps his left arm around Keith’s waist. “So. What do you want to do now? Looks like we have a couple of hours to kill.”

 

* * *

 

Lance actually did a good job, Keith has to admit to himself that evening. Except that he had invited what looks to be half the garrison and most of the Voltron Coalition and so many had shown up that they had to hold dinner outdoors. But, as Keith looks over at Shiro who’s framed against the backdrop of the setting sun, he thinks that that’s not necessarily a bad thing after all.

Shiro’s looking right back at him and reaches out for his hand. “Are you happy, Keith?” he asks.

“Very,” he says. Somehow, in the last couple of years, he’s managed to find a family and a home when he didn’t think he’d be able to have either one of those again. He squeezes Shiro's hand. “Yeah, I’m very happy.”


End file.
